The philosopher Allan Bloom once lamented: ‘There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.’ Perhaps Bloom overstated his case, but as a university teacher myself, I think he’s onto something.
Do people who proclaim that ‘truth is relative’ or that ‘everyone has their own truth’ really believe this? Even Bloom adds the caveat: ‘…or says he believes’. As anyone with two neurons to rub together can see, the thesis is self-defeating. If it’s ‘true’ that truth is relative, then the assertion itself is also relative and cancels itself out. Relativism about what is morally right and wrong less obviously defeats itself, since it is not entirely clear if the claim that “moral standards are relative” is itself a moral claim. But in practice, moral relativism is an equally self-defeating position. For instance, moral relativists will typically condemn the belief in universal moral standards as a form of ‘cultural imperialism’, the implicit assumption being that cultural imperialism is bad. But if moral standards are relative, then so is the claim that cultural imperialism is reprehensible. In any rational discussion, relativism is the intellectual equivalent of ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’, the deterrent used by nuclear superpowers during the Cold War. Pressing the red button will destroy your enemy, but ensure your own destruction as well.
Perhaps a relativist may simply shrug at such logical niceties and happily continue to advocate for relativism, like the Dude in The Big Lebowski: ‘Well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man’. However, even the staunchest relativist doesn’t really swallow his own medicine. Try gratuitously accusing such a person of being a child molester, and they will indignantly protest their innocence. Not as a matter of subjective opinion, as one perspective among other equally valid ones, but as a hard and objective truth. Postmodernists may proclaim that ‘truth’ is a product of power structures and that modern science is just a ‘narrative’ of white European males, but those radical views are thrown out the window when they go to get cancer treatment, or when they board a plane to travel to postmodernist conferences. As Richard Dawkins once said: ‘Nobody is a social constructionist at 30,000 feet.’
It’s the same with moral relativism. People may pretend that judging other cultures is a form of imperialism, and some are disturbingly mealy-mouthed about horrible practices such as genital mutilation or child marriage. But if we were to discover a tribe that, say, willfully tortures innocent children – or any other sufficiently extreme example – they would be equally outraged, and would balk at the notion that the immorality of such practices only exists in the eye of the beholder.
It’s reassuring to know that relativists are not as foolish as they sound. But that doesn’t mean relativism is harmless. Even just pretending that there are no universal standards of right and wrong has pernicious effects. The real purpose of going relativist is always self-serving and opportunistic: to evade criticism and accountability. It’s not so much a sincere belief as a convenient trump card to play whenever it suits you, and then to discreetly tuck away when no longer needed. The philosopher David Stove called it the Ishmael Effect, named after the narrator from Moby Dick. At the end of Melville’s novel, the ship sinks and everyone drowns, except for the narrator of the book: ‘I only am escaped alone to tell thee’. Like Ishmael, the relativist exempts himself from the fate to which he condemns everyone else.
The trouble is that, even though self-serving and self-defeating, there is something about relativism that sounds good. In everyday life we are all familiar with situations in which different people have different perspectives on an issue, and there’s no objective fact of the matter about who’s right. Moreover, criticizing someone can feel as if you’re imposing your beliefs on others, thus infringing on their freedom. Conversely, moral relativism, if you don’t think about it too hard, appears commendably tolerant, humble and self-effacing. And indeed, it’s true that we shouldn’t be too quick to condemn seemingly abhorrent cultural practices if we only have a superficial understanding of their rationale and history. Being overly judgemental can be annoying, as we know from Jesus’s parable about the woman who’s about to get stoned by a mob. If you argue that someone is objectively in the wrong, you sound like one of those sinners who are eager to cast the first stone.
But despite claims to the contrary, sometimes people are objectively wrong, and it’s pernicious to pretend otherwise. In his splendid new book Mental Immunity, the philosopher Andy Norman writes that bad ideas can be regarded as mind parasites, and proposes strategies to inoculate our minds against them. Just like biological parasites can invade our bodies and make us sick, mind parasites can infect our minds and make us stupid. From that immunological perspective, relativism is a major disruptor of our mental immune system. Objective standards of right and wrong are our main defences against bad ideas. If we lose those standards, then anything goes. By disabling our natural immunity, relativism makes us vulnerable to a whole host of bad ideas (because who’s to say that an idea is really bad?) and prevents us from picking up good ones (because why learn anything new if it’s all relative anyway?). It is also corrosive to our social norms, because it undermines the very notion that we are accountable for our beliefs and behaviours, and that we need to be able to justify them if challenged.
In that sense, relativism is not just some bad idea, but the mother lode of bad ideas. It’s about time we stamp it out.
Maarten Boudry
Maarten Boudry is a philosopher of science and current holder of the Etienne Vermeersch Chair of Critical Thinking at Ghent University. His most recent book is Science Unlimited? On the Challenges of Scientism, co-edited with Massimo Pigliucci. He published more than 40 papers in academic journals, and several popular books in Dutch on critical thinking, illusions, and moral progress.
Relativism is just a hop, skip and a jump from nihilism.
And what is the source of nihilism in the modern age?
The astonishing incapacity of so many (not necessarily scientists) who believe the strictly quantitative abstractions that physicists come up with (like gravity, electromagnetism, which are merely concepts to – allegedly – explain regularities in our sensory experience) are “Reality.”
All relativism flows from that fundamental error, “Avidya.”
This is a uniquely important piece. It’s trite, but accurate, to say our current culture is splintering without shared facts. More importantly, we need to heed the philosophical implications. Even the preeminent perspectivist – Nietzsche – believed some interpretations were more valid. Agree with Don in the prior comment, where relativism is indeed the foundation for nihilism. Great essay, thanks
“Is absolutism the opposite of relativism?”
“Not always”
Isn’t relativism the inevitable result of scientistic nihilism?
The piece is well written and commendable as a social commentary of the latest moral trends especially on social media. However, it could benefit from a more logically watertight argument, especially in the Contra Moral Relativism argument in para.4
“People may pretend that judging other cultures…”
is a strong assumption that anybody that holds that view cannot do so truthfully, and is unsupported.
“they would be equally outraged, and would balk at the notion…”
is an inference with an hidden premise:
“But if we were to discover a tribe that, say, willfully tortures innocent children…”
& (the practice is against an unmentioned self-evident categorical imperative /monadic truth about human rights) then (and I might be mistaken by the tone of the article into making it an inference rather an implication) “they would be equally outraged, and would balk..”
Now, it is a verifiable fact that Declaration of Human Rights was signed 10/12/48 and is still not universally upheld. It was not in the past, and may not be in the future. It is a relative concept that hopefully will stay long but is not an Universal Law.
Indeed movements throughout history of which “cancel culture” is the latest incarnation want to destroy any historical reference that is perceived as against their held set of monadic truths because they cannot accept the time-place relativism of their values.
Also the strong statement “The real purpose of going relativist is always self-serving and opportunistic” is historically problematic: the history of religious tolerance and acceptance of diversity is a cogent example of a moving from an Universal Law premises into a much suffered and debated form of relativism that usually weakens one’s stance for the sake of
inclusion and acceptance of specific time-relativity of certain belief-sets (i.e. “it may
have been correct when it was written but not now” as opposed to “God wrote/inspired that
therefore it is so then, now and forever”)
Down the path of immutable Universal Laws lies not only Kant but also any Fundamentalist religious (or political)reading: I am a field professional in humanitarian and peacekeeping and for what’s worth my 1st hand experience points that intolerance and Fundamentalism that do not leave room for relativity have caused much of the killings and displacement in this part of the century.
I do agree with the spirit of the article and I am looking forward to a differently formulated argument. And I just ordered Norman’s book.
Wonderful, fresh insights GL. Thank you. I was thinking of mentioning B. Alan Wallace’s idea of “ontological relativity” but wasn’t sure how it would be received. (also it would take a long time to write a decent summary of it). For what it’s worth, it’s a chapter in his book, “Hidden Dimensions,” which – if you subscribe to scribd.com – you can read for free.
Hello Don,
Isn’t Ontological relativity from Quine’s (“the guy that disliked Russel and Modal Logic”) work 1960-69?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Van_Orman_Quine
Learn something new everyday! yes, I looked up Quine, you’re right. I checked and see that Alan Wallace refers to his as the “special theory of ontological relativity.”
It’s a basic Buddhist (and Christian, really) idea that all Perceived phenomena are interdependent, none being absolute in themselves. This, by the way, includes mind as well as so-called matter (a quite radically different view from Quine!)
In Wallace’s reading of the highest teachings of Buddhism (I know “highest’ is not a typical philosophic word; happy to say something on that if anyone wishes), all these impermanent, interdependent phenomena, including both ‘mind” and “matter” (neither of which are inherently existent, or “absolute”, as the physicalists take “physical stuff” to be, even though they can’t define it), are “conditioned.”
The one exception to this is Nirvana, often referred to in the most ancient Buddhist texts as “the unconditioned.”
and the unconditioned and conditioned are not-two; when realized as such, there is only “such-ness” (or in religious language, pure Divinity).
Sorry to take us so far from our current topic, but in a way, as long as one only knows conditioned phenomena, whether mind or matter – from the Buddhist perspective, it is all relative.
Physicalists, having the same inner tendency toward absolutizing that all humans do, are so blindly intent on making their belief into a dogma have absolutized a pure fiction – “the physical” – which is far far more irrational than any religious belief any human being has concocted.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is considered as part of customary international law, thus universally obligatory, erga omnes.
The Declaration itself already contains antidotes against fundamentalism by recognising the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to take part in government through periodic and genuine elections. Therefore all these rights guarantee the existence of different personal and cultural views, provided that those views do not violate the universal rights contained in the Declaration of course, which are simply inherent to all human beings.
In sum, we can say that the UDHR protects cultural rights and cultural diversity, and at the same time it is against cultural relativism which denies the existance of universal human rights.
This is an interesting short article about the UDHR, cultural diversity and relativism. https://blogs.cuit.columbia.edu/rightsviews/2018/11/15/p-c-chang-and-the-universal-declaration-of-human-rights/
Sorry, should have added:
As long as we adhere to physicalist science, the only knowledge we gain of the world is relative – all of our measurements (which are all that “primary qualities” really are) are relative.
You might say that the history of science is one of denying absolutes in, well, absolutely all spheres.
Some attribute the students’ adherence to relativism as some sort of Leftist prejudice (and if all you know of Leftist views is Marxist-Leninism or the absurdities of academic postmodernism, then you might think that “Left = relativist/nihilism – but 19th century anarchic libertarianism – most certainly a Leftist view, though prior to Marxism – was very strongly related to contemplative and mystical views, views that understood that the Absolute is not opposed to the relative, a most unphilosophic view)
However, though Bloom didn’t seem to understand this, relativism is not primarily related to political orientation but rather to the sad progression from Galileo’s “primary qualities” to 19th century agnosticism to atheistic/naturalistic/materialist/physicalist/scientistic ideology.
For those who would like an enormously fun thought experiment to give you a sense of how delusional scientism has become, I strongly suggest mulling over the opening chapter of Owen Barfield’s “Saving the Appearances.”
I might even submit a agues blog on it. It took me several months of contemplation to get what Barfield was saying – and once I got it, I was astonished I hadn’t seen it before, so obvious is it once you see it.
Excellent piece. I really enjoyed the writing, which I found clear, straightforward, and refreshingly clear of philosophical fancy talk.
As I read the piece my Catholic upbringing continually came to mind, so it was intriguing to reach the end and discover the writer is a philosopher of science and chair of a critical thinking department. I really enjoy such overlaps.
From my formerly Catholic perspective, I would argue that even if relativism were true, human beings typically can’t handle the resulting uncertainty. Although my incurably philosophic nature long ago had to leave Catholicism behind, I’ve come to see a certain wisdom in there being some story, almost any story, consistently articulated by authority figures for the many who require a degree of certainty to make peace with this existence.
You seem to be addressing relativism in general, while conflating the concepts of individual relativism and cultural relativism. Certainly, individual relativism suffers the pitfalls you describe, but when applied to the scale of discrete cultures, most of these fall away. From this perspective, you would also appear to conflate “objectivity” with “consensus.” For how can one speak of objective morality without some absolute frame of reference? What comprises this objectively moral frame of reference to which you would cling? Then, too, if some “objective moral code” exists, is it unchanging over time?
Pragmatic ethics would indicate that morality does change over time. It is a small step from there, to view the culture of one time as distinct from the culture of another time (even within the same region) so would not a full rejection of cultural relativism, then, also necessitate a rejection of pragmatic ethics?
No postmodern philosopher said that the laws of nature were relative. That’s a giant strawman.